The road, if it might be called one, was really a track or belt of morass, some ten chains wide, in which one had to wade at times up to the knees. I was prepared to endure great hardships; but to understand the suffering to man and horse in dragging oneself along that road one must have tried it for himself. Twice that day the horse and I got bogged. To get clear again I had first to crawl on my hands and knees with part of my own load up to some fallen log and deposit it there, then back to the horse for more. When the horse was quite unloaded, I had to take it round the neck and let it use me as a sort of purchase by which to work itself out. Then load it again and wade along. I made eight miles that day, and I knew that no one who left Cooktown with me came so far. At the eighth mile there was a large camp of diggers, who said they could get no further nor yet back to Cooktown. I should have remained there; but as I saw next morning some prepare to get a little further, I started with them, and soon left them behind too. That day and the next the road was better although still very bad. I crossed a river the third evening I was out. It was as much as I could do to get over, and, as in the night it began to pour with rain, I concluded, what really proved to be the case, that the creek would rise and so effectually cut off my retreat. The next day the road was worse than ever. The horse got bogged time after time, and I was myself on the eve of being knocked up. The whole road so far, almost ever since I had left Cooktown, was strewn with clothes, boots, saddles, rations, in such quantities that there would have been enough to have opened a good store with if one could have got it all together. I had also passed at least a score of dead horses, sticking in the mud with the saddles, and, in some cases, rations on them; and I met scores of men, who, having thrown everything away, were struggling to reach Cooktown again on foot. But with dogged obstinacy I kept on trying to accomplish the impossible. At last the poor horse got bogged again worse than ever. I could not get him out. He looked so pitifully at me! I am sure it knew the predicament we were both in. I struggled and tried hard to get it out, but I could not. As it settled deeper and deeper into the quagmire I thought I might as well finish his sufferings and my own. So I put my gun to his ear and shot him.
There I stood in the pouring rain alongside the dead horse, full of anger with myself that I had not, by using more judgment, saved myself and my poor, faithful companion from such a hard fate. I am not poetically gifted, and do not understand the science of making much out of a little, so I cannot say how miserable I felt. Yet it is nevertheless true that I was ready to burst with grief. I was wet through, and had been so all day, nor had I anything dry to put on. Evening was coming on too. Up and down the "road" there was nothing but a quagmire, into which I sank to the knees whenever I moved. Here also lay my hopes of redeeming my fortunes. I know very well if I were placed in the same position now, I should not have strength either of body or mind to extricate myself. As it was, when I think of it now, after so many years, I can truly aver that I mourned for the horse more than for myself. I had met no travellers that day on account of the rain, but I knew I was about eight miles from the Normanby River, on both sides of which large bodies of miners were camped—those on my side being desirous of reaching the Palmer, and the camp on the other side being full of men who had come from the Palmer and wanted to go to Cooktown. But both parties were prevented from getting further as the Normanby River was in full flood and half a mile across.
I could not continue to stand looking at the dead horse. I felt a great longing to reach the other men that I might, by talking to them, forget a part of my own trouble in thinking of theirs, so I managed that evening, and with even a part of my goods, to reach the camp, and the next few days I devoted to fetching the remainder of my stores from where the dead horse was lying.
On the banks of the Normanby River there was at that time a sight which might well furnish food for reflection. I doubt if fiction could invent anything more strange. Several hundred men were camped on the south side of the river waiting for the flood to subside so that they might get over. We had rations in any quantity, but, speaking for myself, I can truthfully say, if the others were like me, we had no money. On the other side of the river was an equally large camp. The men there were the diggers who, when the first news of the Palmer broke out, had, before the wet season set in, gathered to the "rush" from the Etheridge, Gilbert, Charters Towers, Cape, and other outlying places, and who, having eaten their rations and gathered their gold, were now trying to get to Cooktown to purchase supplies. A perfect famine was raging over there. The country around is very poorly off for game; besides, they had no powder, and so they had been eating their horses, their dogs, and at last their boots! It is a fact that they used to boil their blucher boots for twenty-four hours and eat them with weeds! It takes something to make a Queensland miner lie down to die, yet it was the general opinion among men who had been to all the Victorian and New Zealand "rushes," that they had never suffered such hardship before or seen country so void of game or life of any sort.
There we were, looking across at one another—they shaking their gold-purses at us, and we showing them the flour-bags. Two came across to us. The way they managed was this: first they took off the rag or two which yet served them for clothes and strapped them on to the horse, then getting on the horse and forcing it into the water it would soon be borne with the current down the stream; they would then slip off, and getting hold of the tail with one hand swim with the other. They both managed to cross, but it looked so desperate an undertaking that the others did not venture. The two men who came over brought the first reliable news from the Palmer for a long time, and were besieged with questions. As I do not care to return to the matter again, I will say here that among the tales of suffering on the Palmer by the first batch of diggers, was that of one of my shipmates from home, who had arrived there from the Etheridge, and who, while looking for gold in one of the tributaries to the Palmer, had been cut off from the main camp by the river rising so that he could not cross to get away. His dead body was found in his tent after the wet season. He had died of hunger, yet under his head was a bag with eighteen pounds' weight of gold in it. Poor fellow! the last time I saw him was in Port Denison, the first year I was in the country; he had then earned five pounds sterling, and had come into town to get it sent home to his father and mother.
On our side of the river we passed the time as best we could. There was a large band of German musicians, and I joined them with my flute, which I always carried. It really seemed strange, in the heart of the wilderness, where a few months before no white man had ever put his foot, to hear the tones of Strauss or Offenbach. As a general thing, though, men would sit in their tents while the rain came pouring down in sheets of water. At night we suffered very much from mosquitoes, and in the daytime from flies, the common little house-fly, which was a perfect nuisance all day. Dear reader, I know you expect of me that the least I can do for you who have followed my fortunes so far is to tell you now how I somehow proceeded to the Palmer, and there in a month or two accumulated at least twenty thousand ounces of gold, with which I returned and got married to some nobleman's daughter. I should not be sorry to write this if I only had the gold somewhere handy, but as you no doubt would, after all, prefer the truth, whatever it is, I must confess that I could not at all see my way to go on any further. When the weather settled and people began to cross the river I had a good look at the poor emaciated fellows who came across, some of them with very little gold, and all of them more or less broken in health. Then I began to ask myself whether the game was worth the candle. The Germans who constituted the band offered to take me as mate in their party, and to put my rations on their horses; and for that I was greatly obliged to them, but I seemed all at once to have taken such a dislike to roaming about, and was picturing to myself the comfort I could have had and the sum of money I might have saved by constant employment at my trade, that I refused their kind offer, and instead of going on towards the Palmer I sold my rations for a good price and returned to Cooktown.